


If She Could Love

by Myrgh_Kerenza



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:45:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrgh_Kerenza/pseuds/Myrgh_Kerenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the Trials in AtS: s2e09. Darla reflecting on Angel's willingness to die for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If She Could Love

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr blog, daffodilsandviscera.
> 
> Written to fit with the instrumental song "Time", by Hans Zimmer.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not a thing.

Darla couldn’t shake the memory.

A guttural grunt as Angel fought. The hiss of his burning skin as he plunged his hands into holy water. The steely yet soft resolve in his eyes as he agreed to die. Her own tears as she was powerless to stop it.

She’d thought his soul had ruined him. That it had destroyed what he’d been, anything they’d had. She’d been wrong.

She hadn’t understood it until she’d looked through the eyes of her own soul. He’d been willing to die for her. She’d felt every punch, every kick he took for her. She knew the pain of the crosses’ burn, of the holy water that he endured in her name. She wasn’t young; she knew what every one felt like.

Only another vampire—or someone who had once been one—could see what the healing of the undead hid. The blood spilling internally from organ to organ, confines burst by a blow to the gut. The spidery pain shooting down every limb, attached to each cross’ burn like a stinging electrode. The deep yellow and purple bruising that would never reach the surface. Pain so blinding and intense that only the dead could survive it. Darla knew every ache, every twinge. She’d felt it; she’d caused it.

And he’d suffered it for her. To save her.

She was too old, too experienced, to think it was anything like love. Love had never had anything to do with them. They hadn’t been able to love. They both knew it.

But as the memory of the trials played in her mind in an endless, torturous loop, Darla thought that if she could love, she might have. And she could do far worse than Angel, still her dear boy, dying for her as he had so many years ago.


End file.
